Everyone knows that baseball is besotted with unwritten rules. Can’t get enough of them. The more unwritten rules the better.
The Blue Jays And Stealing Signs: What’s The Rumpus?
Don’t steal bases with a big lead.
You throw at our star player, we’ll throw at yours.
Don’t peek at where the catcher is setting up.
Don’t walk over the pitching mound after making an out.And beyond that, there are the unspoken rules:
If you drink the last cup of amphetamine-spiked coffee, make the next pot of amphetamine-spiked coffee.
When caught in a rundown, don’t titter or nervously giggle.And then there are the rules that aren’t necessarily in the rule book, but are important enough to post at ballparks across the country.
NO PEPPERNowhere, though, will you see something about stealing signs. Rules against stealing signs aren’t written, unwritten, or unspoken. When a runner is on second base, the catcher switches his signs to a more complicated, harder-to-decipher set. Why? Because it’s implied that the jerk on second will attempt to steal the signs. The way you know that stealing a sign isn’t an unwritten rule is by how offenders are punished, which is to say that they aren’t. If it were truly something that broke an unwritten rule, unwritten justice would be meted out in the unwritten way: winging a baseball at another guy’s butt.
But a player stealing signs isn’t against the culture or the rules, official or not. When a team thinks their signs are being stolen, they change the signs. Simple, and self-contained. But ESPN is investigating whether or not the Blue Jays are using someone in the stands to steal signs. That’s, like, stealing stealing.
“We know what you’re doing,” he said, referring to the man in white, according to the player and two witnesses. “If you do it again, I’m going to hit you in the [f------] head.”
The difference with what the Blue Jays supposedly did is the outside help. And it is a written rule that outside help (or tools like binoculars) can't be used to pilfer signs. A player on second stealing signs? Go nuts. Pretend you're a cryptanalyst with the best of them. The man in white, though, is taking it too far. Some random goof with binoculars is cheating. A guy on second base scratching his nose isn't.
The idea that only players should be the ones trying to gain the advantage makes sense. Baseball’s a closed system, for the most part. The only way that people in the stands should affect the game is by yelling things. Anything above that, especially something sanctioned by a team employee, is far too much.
But this sort of thing has been going on since at least the ‘50s, and it’s probably been going on since the concept of signs were invented. Outside help has always been solicited to gain unseemly advantages. It’s probably a good idea for every catcher to give every sign as if there is a runner on second base. This is probably an idea that’s about 60 years past due. Always assume the signs are being stolen, and go from there.
The only evidence right now against the Blue Jays is circumstantial, as the ESPN article points out, so there's no way to know if the Jays are really cheating. But it's a fascinating story. And, heck, if my team had to play 22% of its total schedule against the Red Sox and Yankees every year, maybe I'd start considering a little subterfuge too.
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